


linger on

by shamefulshameless



Category: The Goldfinch (2019), The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt
Genre: Angst, Boris POV, Canon Universe, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mutual Pining, Pining, Theo POV, Underage Smoking, basically ten years of boreo pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-19
Updated: 2019-08-19
Packaged: 2020-09-06 15:50:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20294044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shamefulshameless/pseuds/shamefulshameless
Summary: If Theo and Boris hadn’t been in Vegas together at the exact same moment, they would both be dead today. Boris knows it like he knows his own name. He'd be rotting in a ditch somewhere in Poland or Ukraine, and Theo- he'd be long gone, a smear on the Nevada pavement. But while the painting had kept Boris alive after their separation- what had kept Theo afloat? With no goldfinch to keep him tethered to the earth, and no Boris to dig him up if he got buried too deep?If he were to scour the globe looking for him now, what would he find?orBoris and Theo think of each other for ten years. They don't always realize it.





	linger on

The cab is moving in slow motion. It must be. Either that or the world has stopped long enough for Boris to regret what he’s done, and still doing. Standing here. It’s all slowing down to tell him hey, there’s still time. Go. Go. 

But his boots are planted firmly to the concrete. One is tighter than the other, from when it sank to the bottom of the pool all those months ago. It’s squeezing his foot, suffocating him, reminding him. It’s not too late. Go. Go.

As soon as he considers what it might take to follow, (Pick up your toe, then your heel, repeat, run.) suddenly the cab is moving two hundred miles an hour and it's gone, the taillights leaving two blue dots floating, ghostlike, in front of him. You should’ve gone. You should’ve gone.

The painting is in his locker at school, since he hasn’t found a safe place at home to keep it where his dad won’t look. Usually he stays out of Boris’ room, but when he’s really out of it, frothing at the mouth, there’s no telling where he’ll go. It’s still wrapped up in newspaper and tape; Theo’s careful work, thin pale lines obscuring every inch of the Post, not anything like the haphazard Frankenstein of a package Boris had shoved back into that pillowcase.

If Boris were to have the real thing here now, would he look at it? Could he dare face that bird, now that he is who it's chained to? Or would it be bad enough just to see that tape?

He thinks, for a moment, that he’ll go back inside and lay in their bed, work it out in the morning. But- he has to remind himself- it isn’t their bed anymore. It isn’t anyone’s anymore. Instead he lays on some mattress that sits in some room draped in batik, in the house where his father lives. Not home. 

* * *

Theo remembers an argument. 

It had started as a political discussion: his father made a flippant remark about New York elitism and snobbery and how it all pales in comparison to the ‘Real America’ out west. His mother had responded that no part of America was more authentic than any other part- then made the mistake of mentioning that the Midwest is just where they happened to enjoy Larry’s single major film. 

Theo had listened to that one all night, till the front door slammed and there was suffocating silence. A long pause. Footsteps. A soft knock on Theo’s bedroom door. She poked her head in, “Sorry about that, puppy.”

Her words are floating through his ears as he stares out the bus window, at the empty desert spreading in every direction. The Real America. 

He’d never told Boris the story of that argument, but Theo hears his voice as if he’s sitting in the seat next to him. “_Nothing _ in America is real,” he scoffs, “that is the whole point.” 

He should be sitting there. He should be drooling with his head bouncing against the window as he sleeps, Popchyk curled up at his feet. For whatever reason, he’s not. 

But Theo knows the reason. He thinks he does. Boris had spent their last minutes together insisting he had a confession to make, one that would make Theo angry if he were to tell it. He hadn’t, though; could it have been the same as the one Theo had made to himself in the back of the cab?

But why would that make Theo angry? It’s not like he doesn’t know.

* * *

His dad is gone. The only thing left of him is the hastily scratched note on the table and the faint, swampy odor lingering in the bathroom where his suit had always hung.

He can’t stay there, he realizes after just one night. Besides the fact that he’s completely alone, he spots a dried drop of his own blood on the counter, from when his father had grabbed him by the hair and slammed his head against it not long ago.

No, Boris thought as he slowly scratched at it with his fingernail, can’t stay here.

He’s stumbling away from his sort-of-friend Lee’s, where no one answered his near-frantic pounding on the door. In his haze of withdrawal he tries to count the number of lights on in the houses on the street. Three. The next block has a few more. He finds himself following the lights, until he’s on a block where all but two houses have a brightened window. He has no idea where he is, but he likes it.

Boris plops down on the corner, leans against the curb, and faces the sky. He closes his eyes. The only sound is the chattering of his own teeth.

This isn’t so bad. There are lights on.

He doesn’t know how long he stays there. He stays until he thinks he can feel Theo pulling him to his feet by the collar. _ Jesus, get up! _

When Boris opens his eyes again, a lot of the lights have gone out.

He wanders the streets until he finds Desert End Road, and the very spot where he’d stood on the sidewalk that night. There isn't a single light on this entire block. Taking a step forward, he turns and faces the house, suddenly so threatening in the moonlight. He wonders what Theo must have thought, standing here. Had he considered staying? Had he wanted Boris to stop him, follow him? What about after the kiss? What had he wanted then?

It doesn’t matter, he scolds himself, because it’s been long enough- Theo must have put it together. He knows who took the painting; all thoughts of Boris that aren’t filled with venom will be gone by now. It’s only natural.

He’s trembling, he realizes. He looks up again at the house, as dark as his own. He could stand here for hours and no one would notice him. He thinks about breaking in, until he sees a faint glow reflecting off the side fence that separates Theo’s house from his neighbors. Xandra. 

Boris forces his feet to drag him there, and by the time he’s reached the sliding door he feels he may collapse, like it’s all catching up to him now because there’s Xandra, mixing margaritas in her jersey and she’s by herself too, aren’t we all by ourselves? 

He knocks.

Xandra jumps and whirls around in a bleach blonde blur. At the sight of him, she squints her eyes. “What,” she says brusquely.

It’s been a few days since someone spoke to him. “Can I come in,” he calls through the glass, and the ball in his throat is already hardening to stone.

She actually laughs, quick and cruel. “Can you- Jesus. The fucking nerve. Do you have any idea how much you owe me?“

He knows exactly how much. He spent it all.

“Nothing for you here, Russki. Your little friend is gone.”

It hurts more now that he’s heard another person speak it. As if it’s a bad dream coming true. "I know,” he croaks. He must look desperate, but then again, he is. “I don’t have any place to go.”

“There’s your house, for a change.”

“My dad is gone, too.”

She crosses her arms. “What do you mean he’s gone?”

“For business. To Australia,” he manages. “He’s not coming back.” His voice is beginning to crack; he presses his forehead and palms to the glass, trying to steady himself. 

“What, and he just left you here?” she asks.

Boris nods against the door. A voice in the back of his head keeps telling him that if he can’t get into this house, he may as well be dead. Because she really is the only one left. As pathetic as it sounds, there’s no Theo, no Kotku, no Dad, no friends at school now that his supply has run out. Just Xandra with her cocktail sausages and stinky perfume. 

“You know what,” she hisses, “Good.” Boris looks up to see her stalking forward, a lioness approaching prey, until she’s nose to nose with him on the other side of the door. She’s still hissing, and then she’s yelling, fire in her eyes, calling him every bad name he’s ever heard, and some even he hasn’t. He’s a fucked up little pervert, he’s a piece of commie shit, he should have left with Larry’s snide fucker of a kid, he owes her a thousand dollars and she’ll beat it out of him if she has to, nasty fucking vulture, dirty thief, on and on and on. 

Normally, words are nothing to Boris. But tonight, with withdrawal drowning out his senses, with the only home he’s ever known a pane of glass away, he feels himself crumble into sand.

Xandra finishes her tirade. She won’t let him in. He deserves what he’s gotten. 

Boris bites his lip, hard, wanting nothing but to be able to walk away. 

Instead, he cries. Slowly at first, but before long he’s weeping so hard, so quick, he’s hugging himself trying not to collapse under the weight of it. Silent, belly sobs that make some part of him worry he might cough up everything he’s eaten in the last week (which hasn’t been much). 

But mostly he isn’t thinking at all. His lips are forming words- mainly “please”- but they have no strength behind them. He’s done for, he figures. End of the line. He’s going to stand on this shitty doormat and cry until some great dusty storm comes and blows him away. 

Truthfully, he believed Xandra had left her place at the door and turned back to her drinks, or gone upstairs to take a pill and go to sleep. But the door- slowly- opens, so she must still be standing here.

She doesn’t move. She stands in the threshold, looking him up and down, grinding her teeth in the way Theo always hated. Boris’ breath starts to steady. It’s all so close. His cigarettes and his albums and his clothes and he has to get in. He has to be with someone who isn’t himself.

“Can I stay here?” he hears a broken voice ask. (It must be his own, but it sounds so unfamiliar to him that he almost isn’t sure.) “Please.”

Xandra unclenches her jaw. Her face cracks as she sighs to herself. “..._Fuck_.” She steps back to let him in, which he does gingerly, as if the floor might shatter beneath his feet.

“My room has a TV. Don’t turn it on too loud.”

It takes every ounce of him not to cry again.

“I find one nickel out of place, and you’re out.”

Boris nods. He finds himself averting his eyes when he walks past Theo’s old room.

* * *

Welty’s bed takes some getting used to. For starters, it’s some kind of specialized mattress made for his spinal condition, so it’s simultaneously too soft and too firm, depending on how he positions himself.

Of course, that’s not the only reason Theo can’t sleep. He hasn’t slept peacefully since last April. But the bed doesn’t help. 

The closest he’s come since then to a decent rest was in Vegas- when there was someone else there. Pressed against his spine, cupped around his cheek, breathing into his neck. It helped him sleep better than anything Mrs. Barbour ever gave him. 

Popper is curled up in between his elbow and his stomach, breathing softly. At least one thing is the same. 

The mattress is huge- so huge that maybe, if he closes his eyes… maybe Boris is here. Maybe he’s just on the other side of the massive bed, where Theo can’t feel him laying there. That’s it. He’s there.

He tells himself that until he falls asleep habitually for a few weeks. It doesn’t work as well as he wants it to, but it does ensure that Boris pops up in his dreams every night. 

One morning Hobie asks over breakfast: “Have you spoken to your friend from Las Vegas? What was his name?”

Theo almost chokes on his food. “What?” he sputters. 

“Your friend, you told me a bit about him. Has he gotten in touch?” he’s peering at Theo rather strangely over his coffee.

“Boris. Yeah,” he half-lies, “We’ve talked.”

“I’m glad to hear it. He seems an interesting cub, from what you’ve said.”

Theo hasn’t said much. Hobie knows of Boris’ existence- his childhood, a little, and only the shortest anecdotes from it that Theo thought Hobie would be most entertained by. 

“He- he is,” Theo says. “Very interesting.” They don’t say anything more on the matter. 

As he ingratiates himself further and further into Hobie’s world, he finds Vegas and the subject of Boris easier to discuss. Soon he’s offhandedly mentioning something he’d learned from Boris about languages in everyday conversation (“In Russian, you’d actually say...”) or a thought Boris had had about the motivations of a certain character in a book that Hobie’s been reading.

After one such occurrence, Hobie smiles his tight-lipped smile. “I feel as if he’s a member of the family.” 

Theo chuckles lamely. He doesn't know whether to feel more awkward that Hobie considers him family, or that Boris would ever come to exist in the same world as him. The lives he lived with Boris and with Hobie don't belong together, somehow.

That night Theo plays his game of ‘pretend he’s in the bed’ and falls into a light, fitful sleep. But instead of a dream, it’s a memory, exactly how it had happened:

The first time he’d smoked weed. They were at the playground, six months after they’d met and not long after they’d began... whatever they’d began doing at night.

Theo had been smoking cigarettes for a while, but Boris explained to him how different an experience it would be. They sat cross-legged on the mulch between the two old swings, facing each other. He watched Boris’ fingers as he rolled the joint and tried to pay attention to what he was saying. “You want to inhale all the way down to your lungs. Like burn in the back of your throat. Will be uncomfortable at first, but you will learn to love it.”

“What’ll I feel?”

“The first time, maybe nothing,” Boris shrugged, “But either way, will be fun.” He licked the edge of the rolling paper expertly as Theo found anything in the playground to look at other than his tongue. There’s an ant on my shoe, would you look at that. What a nice cloud. 

“Potter,” Boris moved to catch his eye. “All good?”

Theo nodded.

Boris stuck the joint between his teeth and lit it with his dad’s gold lighter. “First time,” he said around it, “Is easier if we do like this.”

“Like what?” Theo asked, but before he had the question all the way out, Boris was taking a deep inhale and leaning forward. Suddenly he was inches from Theo’s face; Theo could see every individual eyelash, every pale freckle. He felt his ears burst into flames.

He started to recoil, but stopped when he felt a warm hand grip him under the chin- Boris’ thumb and two forefingers pressing on either side of his face, drawing him closer. As if a secret code had been uttered, Theo opened his mouth and let the hot brush of breath and smoke blow between his lips. 

“Into your lungs, Potter.” Boris was focused intently on Theo’s mouth- surely just to pay attention to the task at hand?- while Theo couldn’t look away from the bright black eyes inches from his own, mischievous like an old painting’s. 

He forced himself to breathe as deeply as he could. 

“Hold it.” _He doesn’t need to keep sitting this close, does he? He can probably take his fingers off my cheeks? _

Theo's reverie was interrupted by the burning in his throat, sending him into a coughing fit and Boris reeling away. He laughed as Theo took a long minute to catch his breath.

“Coughing is good, don’t let anyone say different,” Boris said casually, leaning back on his hands. “It means you got a good, long hit.” 

“You didn’t bring water, did you?” 

“Why would I have water?”

“Idiot,” Theo kicked him in the shin.

Boris laughed his sharp, barking laugh. “I am an idiot? Man holding the joint?” he held it up. “You don’t have to take any more, then.”

“No, no,” Theo said quickly.

Another, louder guffaw. “That’s what I thought. Always be nice to man holding the joint.” He held it out at arms’ length. “Want to hit it yourself?" he asked breezily. "Or need help again?” 

Theo thought about the minute before, Boris closer than he'd ever been in the light of day, fingers pressing firmly but softly into his cheeks, his lips so close Theo could study every line, every bit of chapped skin beginning to peel. Heat, heat everywhere: from the smoke, the sun, Boris’ hand and his eyes like burning coals; from Theo’s ears and neck and somewhere else deep in the pit of his stomach.

“What do you want to do, Potter?”

Theo wakes up.

* * *

He’s never gone back before. Not to anywhere he’s lived. Not even New Guinea, the place he’d always sworn he’d return to.

But here he is. 

It looks the same- wide open spaces between the ugly houses, thick desert air. Tacky looking signs and old cars. People are scarce, just like they always were. 

The sign is new-

KARMEYWALLAG WELCOMES YOU. 

He should have probably checked to make sure the bar was still here before booking a flight from Bruges, where he’s been squatting the last few months. But he’s never been a good planner. Luckily, there it stands, in all its run-down glory. Boris feels a sudden, unfamiliar anxiety spring up in his chest- what if she doesn’t remember him, or doesn’t care to? He may remind her of the worst time in her life, or maybe- worse yet- their time together meant nothing to her, and he was just a pet, a pastime to get her through the day.

He steels himself and walks in anyway.

It looks mostly unchanged, except for the newer television set droning away at the end of the bar. There are a few customers at a table, two drunks facing the back mirror who don’t bother to look up at the sound of the door. A man he doesn’t recognize is cleaning a glass and most certainly notices him as he strides toward a seat at the counter.

“You’re new,” he says gruffly. “From around here?”

“No, not exactly,” Boris hopes the Australian in his accent will be enough to not raise any suspicion, but that hope is quickly dashed. 

“Foreigner?”

“Does Judy still work here?” Boris gets right to it.

The man blinks. “How do you know Judy?”

“She’s an old friend,” he smiles tensely.

“‘Old friend?’ You can’t be more than twenty, mate,” he sniggers, and the drunk to Boris’ right laughs along. It’s obvious he has no idea what he’s laughing at.

“Does she work here or not,” Boris says, itching for a drink himself. “Or is there somewhere I can reach her-“

“Judy!” the man bellows over his shoulder. “Foreigner here to see you!”

Boris’ heart races. Here? Right now? 

The door to the grimy kitchen swings open. “A what?” a female voice says.

She looks a lot older, frown lines embedded deep in her face, but beautiful as ever. Her hair is still bleached and teased, and there isn’t any more blue stuff on her eyelids. She’s filled out- good thing, since Boris knew, even as a starved child himself, that she didn’t eat enough- and she has those same long fingernails he remembers so well.

He stands up, aware his long black coat and formal outfit are as out of place here as snowfall.

“A foreigner,” the bartender repeats to her. “Says he knows you.”

Judy’s eyes fall on Boris, and immediately seem to be doing some sort of equation. Trying to place him. He feels himself shrink: all of the sudden he’s that scared child nipping at her heels, afraid to talk, afraid of everything.

“I don’t know if you remember me,” he says, and shocks himself at how just timid he sounds. “I lived here, ten years or so ago, when I was just little, but-“

She grins at his voice. “_Boris_.”

They sit later in her squat, overdecorated house where they had watched soap operas when he was young. She’s clutching his hands as she tells him what she’s gotten up to, even brushing his hair out of his face a few times, as if she doesn’t know she’s doing it. It’s lovely.

“It was almost a relief, to be honest,” she’s saying, “I’ll deny if you tell anyone I said it but- losing him was good for me... for the pub, for everybody.”

Her husband, apparently, had died a few short years after Boris had left, suddenly and accidentally. He doesn’t tell her how overjoyed he is to hear it. 

And he’s tried to deflect as much as he can when it comes to his own life- he doesn’t want to disappoint her with the knowledge that he’d grown up to be another useless criminal. 

On cue: “And you, love, after you got dragged off? Where’d you end up?”

Boris laughs awkwardly. “Here and there.”

“‘Here and there.’” She makes a face. “I taught you too much for you to come back and be this bloody quiet. At least tell me you kept up with _McLeod’s_.” 

He winces at her bashfully, to which she whacks him upside the head. 

“Sorry, sorry!” Boris laughs. “Was busy!”

”Well? Are you going to tell me?”

Nothing he’s been up to recently seems the right thing to say. So he goes back in time, to after the last time he’d seen her. He tells her about New Guinea, and being Badr al-Dine, about Alaskan winters and-

“What’s Las Vegas like, then?”

“I barely went into the city. Stayed mostly in suburbs, causing trouble.” He tells her about Theo, his brother in arms, even tells her the funniest of the shoplifting stories. Judy howls with laughter as the fat guard falls on his ass.

“Do you keep in touch with Potter?” she asks.

He thinks of their last correspondence, five years ago. CALL ME L8R. “Not so much, no.”

When Theo invades his thoughts now, he’s accompanied by a hollow pang of guilt in Boris’ gut like a knife. He wishes it was otherwise- he wishes he could just miss him. 

“What a shame,” Judy says. Boris doesn’t know who initiated the contact, but his head is resting on Judy’s shoulder. “Another one of us,” she adds warmly, lightly.

“Hmm?” he closes his eyes at her hands attempting to smooth out his hair.

“Another one of your broken hearts, dear. You leave them everywhere you go.”

She’s kidding. He knows that.

Boris stays with Judy for three more days, watching soap operas and showing her words in Polish and Russian, teaching her like she’d taught him. He can mostly keep the thought out of his head. I leave them everywhere I go.

* * *

_ I am a fool with a heart but no brains, and you are a fool with brains but no heart; and we are both unhappy, and we both suffer. _

Theo stops. He reads the sentence again. One more time. And once more. He pulls the pencil out from behind his ear and draws a neat little box around the passage. He’s by himself, huddled over a cramped coffee shop table, working his way through _ The Idiot _ to varied success. 

Like the rest of the book, he’d heard it in Boris’ voice, hard and sarcastic. But it felt more vivid today. Because he had heard this passage in Boris’ actual voice, once: on an afternoon hiding from Xandra, during his weeks as a stowaway in Theo’s bedroom. After Theo shouldered open the door, balancing a mug of piping hot tea between his hands, Boris had barked this exact line at him.

“Is a bit like me and you, no?” he’d asked brightly.

“No heart? Fuck you, thanks.”

“We are maybe not so dreary as all that. But still.”

He thinks, almost seven years later, that he finally understands what Boris had meant. He tries to get back to reading, but keeps scanning the same sentences over and over, his eyes losing focus. He closes the book. He’s done enough today, anyhow. 

Theo takes off his glasses, rubs his eyes. It’s nearing rush hour, when this place will be swamped by Wall Street guys and working moms in a hurry, and he and the other frazzled college students camping out in here will have to scram. He gives himself twenty more minutes.

He’s not sure what compels him. But it’s been a while- what’s the harm. He takes his laptop out of his bag and connects to the internet. Slowly, almost carefully, he types ‘boris pavlikovsky’ into the search bar.

When results pop up, Theo's breath catches, until he realizes that none of them are him, or likely even related to him. He scrolls through a few Facebook pages and sketchy looking websites before shutting the computer again. It isn’t the first time he’s tried to track down Boris, and it won’t be the last, he knows.

Maybe if he really wanted to, he could put in a bit more effort and find him. Hire a private eye, or simply enlist someone in his computer science class that actually knows what they’re doing.

But Theo doesn’t know if he really wants to. Boris is the one who stopped answering in the first place- he may not want to be found. (Theo considers what he’d say if he ran into him somewhere, or answered a call to discover him on the other end. Picturing these scenarios always seems to cause a very particular brand of anxiety to take hold of his chest. He can’t name it. He doesn’t know how.)

The safest thing is to be content knowing that Boris has his own life, probably. Even if it means a lifetime of flinching when he sees an unruly head of black hair leaning over a book on the subway. Even if it means never understanding what happened the last time they saw each other.

Theo sighs again and packs up his things, pushing Boris as far out of his mind as he can muster.

Two blocks away from the coffee shop, he feels a sudden urge to call Pippa.

* * *

That was a close call. 

Boris sits in the backseat, breathing hard, arms clasped around the wooden board like a lifeline. He presses his forehead onto the top edge of it, careful not to touch the front with his skin, and thanks Mother Mary in every language he knows.

“In a bit of trouble?” Gyuri’s voice stirs him.

“This surprises you?” he smiles weakly. Gyuri’s eyes are unimpressed in the rearview mirror. “Just a close one,” Boris adds, “That’s it. Nothing to panic over.”

“And it’s still good? For next time?”

Boris nods, still too out of breath to answer.

It had been his fault. He knows he’s too trusting, and always has been. He’s known worldwide as the friendliest crime boss you could ever hope to encounter, and while he takes a certain pride in that image, too many have tried to take advantage of him because of it.

Today, they’d short-changed him; given him bad shit, cut with synthetic fillers and nasty gunk that no one in their right mind would want to load up with. Boris had returned to demand they right the wrong- as an addict himself, he knows the agony that comes from the wrong thing coursing through your veins. He isn’t about to take part in that.

He’d been stupid enough to believe that the clout he’d built over the years would be enough to make them stand down immediately. But they were bold: they insisted that if Boris wanted anything purer, he’d have to front a lot more than a bullshit painting.

It had led to some words, which had led to some threats, which led to the painting being lorded precariously over a fireplace like a bad movie, and perhaps a shot or two had been fired. Perhaps Boris had put a cap in someone’s foot and made off with the painting, exploding into Gyuri’s backseat moments before the warehouse door busted open and a hail of bullets were unleashed into the night. Who can keep it straight?

The painting now sits unprotected in his lap. Staring at him. Accusing him.

_ What? _He asks it silently. _ Would you have preferred to stay there and burn? _

The painting- thank god, or he’d have more important things to worry about- doesn’t answer. It just glares at him. 

_ You’re angry that I’m not him. We’ve been over this before. _

Again, no response from the little finch.

Guilt, shame, humiliation. Three bullets in a pistol whose barrel spins randomly and shoots Boris in the chest every time he faces this bird. He shouldn’t have it. How many times must he think it until he accepts the fact that regret won’t get it back to where it belongs? Or that nothing will erase what he’s been doing with it?

It’s saved his life countless times- created him, Borya the Polack, who can lift three million euros off you in two days with a smile on his face. 

He wouldn’t have any of it without this bird. 

And- strangely, he realizes- he loves it. He loves it purely, deeply, the way he’d heard people who have time for such things love art. It speaks to him, even though usually it doesn’t have anything nice to say. But it still speaks. It sings, actually. It sings him songs, songs of youth, and mourning. Songs of the desert.

Sometimes when he looks at it he thinks he can smell chlorine.

He remembers something from those long books- he’d read them in Alaska, with nothing better to do, and they’d ended up giving Theo his name- when Harry Potter finds the shard of mirror in his trunk. He becomes certain he can see someone looking back at him through the glass. In a certain light, he can see an eye. Boris doesn’t remember the details- who was at the other end and why- but if he tilts the painting just right, Theo’s face flashes before his eyes. (He never looks happy to see him.)

He worries about Potter, even now, all these years later. Boris finds himself fretting over it, actually, when he should be doing much more important things than wondering where he is, what he’s doing, or if he’d gotten hooked on Larry’s pills, too. 

If Theo and Boris hadn’t been in Vegas together at the exact same time, they would both be dead today. Boris knows it like he knows his own name. He'd be rotting in a ditch somewhere in Poland or Ukraine, and Theo- he'd be long gone, a smear on the Nevada pavement. But while the painting had kept Boris alive after their separation- what kept Theo afloat?

If he were to scour the globe looking for him now, what would he find? 

He never entertains the thought of Theo’s death for long; it threatens to tear Boris apart, since if he was dead, Boris would be the one to blame. No painting tethering him to the earth, and no Boris to dig him up if he got buried too deep.

He leans his head back on the headrest, knowing that if he lost the little bird, he might be set adrift, too.

_ “Where are you from?” so many of his associates ask when they hear him speak for the first time. _

“_Las Vegas,” he always answers. _

* * *

Sometimes, Theo lets Popper sit with him in the shop. He has a worn-out green doggie bed that sits against the side of the desk where Theo works, and in his old age he stays in it more and more when customers come in. Allowing Popper into the shop was Hobie’s idea- he’d suggested it since “the little thing must be so lonely all day”. Yet he couldn’t very well sit in the workshop with power tools and wood shavings everywhere, where Hobie might lose track of him.

So he got stuck with Theo. At first, he was rather sour at the idea of a dog distracting customers from shopping- it threw off his carefully crafted formula on how to trick his clientele. But soon, he realized that Popper’s cuteness was just another piece of the puzzle: people leaning down to pet him, inquiring about his breed, aren’t people paying full attention to what they may be paying for a certain worthless piano stool. Not to mention that presenting himself as the kind of guy who would own such a non-threatening, effeminate dog made him a more trustworthy figure than if he’d sat coldly observing the shop in his Turnbull and Asser suit. So Popper stayed.

Today, the little thing is thrilled, since a pair of rich socialites walked in with their young daughter in tow. She’s probably nine or ten, dressed in bright pinks and yellows from top to bottom. The moment she came in, her eyes landed directly on Popper, and was on the floor at Theo’s side and petting him on the head before he could even make sense of what was happening.

“Naomi,” the girl’s mother scolds, “We ask before we pet someone else’s dog.”

The girl- Naomi- looks sheepishly up at Theo. He must seem a threatening figure from below, especially with the distaste he’s sure he’s not successfully keeping concealed. He _ really _ doesn’t like children.

“May I pet your dog?” she asks.

Theo musters a smile. “Of course.” He’d prefer if her very wealthy, stupid looking parents got wrapped up in the dog, but at least if she falls in love with it, it gives them a reason to stick around for longer. Popper, meanwhile, is in heaven, already prone on his back, demanding a stomach rub. _ Descended from the mighty wolf_, Theo thinks with a sigh.

He stands and joins the parents as they peer into an armoire that should be worth a few thousand, at most. He can sell it for sixty.

As he’s showing them the (fudged) detailing on the back of a shelf with a pen light, Theo can hear Popper squealing with glee as he rolls around on the floor with the little girl, high pitched and frantic. He cuts himself off mid-sentence and furrows his brows. He hasn’t heard Popchyk screech like that since-

“Everything alright?” the blowhard father asks. He’s an investment banker type, the kind who will do anything to insist to Theo just how much he was like him in his day. 

“Yes, sir,” Theo recovers, “Sorry about that. Lost my train of thought for a moment.” He hopes this will come off as charming quirkiness and not ineptitude. 

He ignores Popper and Naomi’s playdate as he shows the couple the botched records of who had owned this genuine Sheraton before. “The list is long,” he says, “But with our finest piece of this size, what else can you expect?” They chuckle to prove they understand a word about this sort of thing, which they clearly don’t. 

“Sir?” a voice from behind him calls. Theo turns to see the little girl reclined on a 1950’s loveseat- Popper curled up in a ball on her head. Out of nowhere, his blood runs cold.

“What’s your dog’s name?” she says.

Theo gulps. “Popper.” The fluffball looks up at the sound of his name, but doesn’t move. “Well, we call him Popchyk, sometimes,” Theo adds hastily. It’s not true; he doesn’t even know if Hobie knows that nickname exists. 

“Popchyk!” Naomi beams. Popper’s tail wags wildly at the nickname- but maybe that's Theo’s imagination.

The girl’s parents are clearly amused at the sight of their daughter and the little white dog. The mother turns to Theo. “How’d he get that nickname, then?” she asks politely.

“An old friend of mine,” he says dismissively. He clasps his hands together. “So, we agree on sixty four for the Sheraton?”

After they leave, and Popchyk is pawing at the door where Naomi had gone, Hobie appears from his workshop. “Was that Popper I heard?” 

Theo nods. “A couple brought in their daughter. She really took to him.” He doesn’t look up from his book.

“It certainly sounded like it. I've never heard him so ecstatic.”

“He’d get like that with Boris,” Theo says into the pages of _ Factotum. _ “All the time.”

Hobie moves to sit on the same loveseat the girl had just been in, and Popchyk toddles over to greet him. “Ah,” he’s saying. “That must have been a very _loud_ few years, then.”

“You have no idea.”

He doesn’t think too much about Boris anymore. He comes to Theo more in feelings- he’ll walk past a sullen teenager dressed in black, or hear Russian conversation filtering in through a window. Cloudless sunny days, hangover headaches, smoke blowing between his lips. Boris’ name rarely comes to mind, but how Theo had felt when he was with him often does. He slides back into the sensations of those sweaty, drunken years like putting on an old glove.

The exception, as always, is the painting. When he thinks of it sitting in its locker uptown, it gives his brain permission to open the floodgates, and all the thoughts he tries not to think bubble up at once. His mother, his father, Pippa- the _ real _Pippa, the one who he isn’t destined to be with, the one without any interest in him at all- his addiction, his lies. And Boris.

He’d wondered fairly recently about why he’d chosen the combination for the locker the way he did. At the time, it had seemed so normal, almost obvious to choose Boris’ phone number. Now it feels like a movement towards something he doesn’t want to consider.

Seeing Popchyk on Naomi’s head today felt like another inch in the wrong direction.

He looks at Popper again now, sitting comfortably at Hobie’s feet. A dull ache threatens to collapse his chest. He won’t let it; he closes his book and stands. “Wanna grab lunch?”

Hobie agrees eagerly, and has about six restaurants in mind by the time Theo grabs his coat. 

Hobie looks at him shrewdly over their food. Sometimes Theo feels Hobie can look inside him, pick him apart like he’s a desk with a faulty drawer that needs repairing. “You know, I had this girlfriend in high school,” he says abruptly.

Theo blinks. Hobie rarely talks about his youth, much less his romantic exploits of the past.

“Melissa was her name. She was the prettiest girl in school. She always wore bright colors, and lots of makeup. She had a wild mane of dark, dark hair- she turned heads wherever she went.” He smiles. “Well, she could pick any boy she wanted, but she picked me. Quite literally. She approached me in the hall and told me I would be taking her to a movie that Friday. Oh, the way everyone glared at me!" He makes himself laugh.

“Before we started dating, truthfully, I hadn’t paid her much mind. But from that day on, oh- I was just fawning over her. Day in and day out, I couldn’t believe how lucky I was. One day I was that trucker’s son, working silently in the back of shop class, and the next I was the biggest thing on campus.” He scratches his wrist under his beaded bracelet. “But, looking back, I don’t know... _why_ I felt so strongly about her. I barely knew her. I suppose everyone had- built her up. She was the girl I was supposed to want.”

“But not the one you wanted.”

Hobie chuckles. “You could say that.”

“Who did you really want?” He thinks of Pippa laughing over the phone.

“I couldn’t tell you for sure. It all felt so… nebulous. She wasn’t quite right but… well, neither were any of the others.”

“What do you mean?” Theo knows Hobie well enough to know that he doesn’t tell stories like this for no reason. 

Hobie takes a deep breath, obviously understanding that Theo is saying _get to the point. _“When I spent all day long thinking about the perfect girl, I refused to consider… any other possibilities," he says carefully. "Especially not ones that people might view the wrong way.”

Theo mulls this over for the rest of the afternoon, then again that night. He takes half a pill and collapses in bed, letting the high crash over him like the sea.

The right person. That’s Pippa. Theo is positive, has been positive for years that his love for Pippa won’t die until he does. It’s how it is and will always be. 

(He thinks he sees a wing flapping out of the corner of his eye- a goldfinch singing on his shoulder. It tells him in that same lucid song he sometimes hears that that’s not really true.)

Or was Hobie trying to say something else? That she’s Theo’s perfect high school girlfriend- but instead of turning heads in hallways, she causes flame and fire, destruction of the highest order. The one you’re supposed to want, Hobie had said. That’s Pippa, too. 

He wishes he was the kind of person that could pound on Hobie’s door right now and demand clarity, but he isn’t. Just as he isn’t the kind of person that Hobie feels can handle the truth laid bare. Maybe he really can't.

And when he said there were possibilities that may be viewed ‘the wrong way’, ones he hadn’t considered- Theo doesn’t understand how that applies to him at all. He’s considered every possibility, girls just like Pippa, girls the opposite of Pippa, girls that were strangers or that he’d known his whole life. 

It's been a while since his last hit- he's overdone it, he's too high. He’s spiraling. He stumbles out of bed and into the bathroom, forgets why he did that, and climbs back under the covers, feeling each individual drop of sweat form on his skin. 

Theo falls into a fitful sleep, and when he wakes up he swears he thinks, as if he’s a teenager again, that Boris is in the bed. 

* * *

Boris had insisted he would ride in coach, despite Myriam’s protests. He usually flies first class- once or twice on a private jet, though it attracts too much attention for his taste. Yet now he’s somewhat regretting his decision: the child behind him has been kicking his seat for the last three hours and there isn’t enough cheap airplane booze in the world to tune it out. Still, it felt like the right thing to do to kick off his mission of peace. 

Losing the painting had felt to Boris like losing a limb he didn’t know was there. Without it he feels listless, confused. He can only imagine how it must have felt to Theo the day he unwrapped the Civics textbook. Like the daggers Boris had scribbled around his name at the top leapt off the page and into his body, perhaps. Not dissimilar from the way Boris has always felt about stealing it in the first place.

He urges himself not to dwell; he’s going to fix it! He’s going to fix it, he’s going to get it back, and deliver it by hand to Theo himself. He’s going to do it. He won’t accept any other outcome.

Boris’ knees are cramping from seven and a half hours on the plane. The screen in front of him- since he can’t bring himself to focus on a movie- displays a cheery cartoon map with a brightly colored plane hovering over the Atlantic. YOU ARE HERE.

He’s never been a patient person, but he’s gotten used to air travel since starting his little business. Today, though, his tolerance is failing him. One hour and seventeen more minutes. 

The last time he was in New York, a little over a year ago, he’d thought about visiting Theo’s shop. Not long before that, one of Horst’s desperate teenagers had traded Theo’s contact information for a few grams of Boris’ finest stuff. He hadn’t done anything with it; just let the address and phone number rot in his cell phone. Sometimes it glared at him with the same contempt as the painting used to.

But he did drive past him, last year. He hadn’t even meant to- he had business in the Village, and when he looked out the window for a moment, there it was. Hobart and Blackwell, exactly as Theo had described it to him in Vegas. As rush hour traffic groaned along, Boris found himself straining to see through the windows, but they were so cluttered with stacks of furniture that he couldn’t get a good look. It's for the best, he thought at the time. 

He’s wondered several times if the reason he keeps his distance from Theo isn’t to protect him, or out of shame, but out of greed. The painting had made him rich beyond belief, and seeing Theo would require him to think of an excuse not to give it back. So he'd never done it. And now that it’s gone, here he is, marching to Theo’s door. Now that he doesn't have a priceless masterpiece to hand over.

It’s an ugly thought. Uglier still is the fact that he wouldn’t be at all surprised to learn it about himself. Boris has never been a _ good _person. Kind, he tries to be. Loving, when he can. Respectful, smart- maybe even powerful. But not good.

There had been a period of time, years ago, when he’d began to believe otherwise. Two years where Boris had gotten it into his head that perhaps he wasn’t worthless, but far from it: even more than good. Special. Needed. 

He’d never been that almost-good person before Las Vegas. He doesn’t think he’s been him after. As a boy, Boris was always the dead weight, the dumb child, the useless delinquent, but with Theo- he’d been a partner in desperation. Lost in their hazes of explosions and beatings and drunken fathers and dead mothers and loss after loss after loss, they’d grappled in the swirling dust till they found each other and didn’t let go. 

Theo had needed him, in a way no one else had or has since; needed him to laugh, to sleep, to feel anything except the death of his mother crushing him from every direction. Boris had been content to rise to that occasion, drag him inside from the street, clean up his sick, and not mention it in the morning. Being a lifeline was more than he could have asked for.

But then it became something else. Theo didn’t just _ need _Boris- he wanted him. Truly and honestly, of his own free will, Theo had chosen him. 

Theo always seemed to think it was the other way around; one night he was too drunk for his own good, swimming in the pool, and he looked up blearily.

“Boris.”

“Hmm.” Boris was at the edge of the pool, dangling his feet into the water.

“Why’d you talk to me?”

“Eh?”

“When we met. Waiting for the bus, why’d you talk to me?”

Boris shrugged. “You look like the wizard boy.” He held up his arms to shield his face from the water Theo splashed at him. 

“Fucking dick. I mean it,” Theo was completely out of it; there was no way he’d remember any of this tomorrow.

“I don’t know. I liked you in Spirsetskaya’s. You said smart things. Everyone else in there is being stupid every day.” 

He’d swam closer now, he could be touching Boris’ foot. “But- why that day?” he slurred.

Boris shrugged again. “That was first day you noticed me.”

“I thought you were _ so _cool." Theo reached up a hand and started fiddling absently with the cuff of Boris’ jeans. "Like- you wouldn’t talk to me in a million years.”

Boris laughed, resisted the urge to flinch at the contact. “Then what happened, Potter? Then you met me?”

Theo nodded solemnly, which only made Boris laugh harder. “‘Snot a joke!” Theo shouted incredulously. After Boris didn’t stop, Theo grabbed him by the ankle and yanked him into the pool.

Later, after lots of wrestling around in the water and several more ill-advised vodka shots, they were back in their room. Boris sat on the bed, leaning up against the wall, complaining about Theo’s briefs. “Is just too tight, like, how do you breathe?”

Theo stumbled out of the bathroom in an identical outfit to Boris’ (just a pair of his underwear), humming an _ I don’t know _sound. “Dicks don’t breathe, do they?” he said to the ceiling.

Boris took another long drag off his cigarette. “Not the way you are thinking, alkie.” A chortle escaped his lips as he slid off the bed to help Theo walk. They managed to make it back to the mattress without vomiting or tripping over Popchyk, who was circling eagerly around their feet.

Theo collapsed onto his side of the bed, face down. Boris deposited Popchyk onto his back before walking to the window, peering warily out at the pool. After the vomit/boot/blood incident, he’d been careful to check the state of it every night before Larry and Xandra crashed through the door the next morning. 

Tonight, it looked fine, except for Boris’ sopping wet clothes lying in a heap where he’d gotten out and stripped them off. He could get them the next morning, no problem. 

“Boris,” he heard a muffled whisper. “You here?”

Boris put his cigarette out on the dresser, leaving a black mark to accompany all the identical smudges already scorched into the wood. “Where else, Potter?” He made his way back to the bed.

Theo adjusted his head so he could talk without speaking into his pillow. “You think about your mom, right?”

“I do.” Boris sighed and climbed over Theo to sit again against the wall. He could always gauge how wasted Theo was by when, exactly, he brought up his mother. But Boris’ came up far less often. He couldn’t tell precisely what this was gauging. 

“You don’t talk about her,” Theo turned to face him, his glasses comically askew. “Like, almost never.”

“Does it bring her back if I do?” he replied simply.

Theo’s eyes were watering, the way he only let them when he was this drunk. “No,” he whispered, “It doesn’t.”

“You don’t often, either,” Boris wished he had lit another cigarette. 

“I told you how my mom died.”

“So did I. But if all we are is how we die, then this is bleak world, no?” 

Theo sniffed. He was silent for a long few minutes, moving only to shoo Popchyk off of him so he could roll onto his back. He stared at the ceiling like it was going to crack open and suck him into space. 

Boris wanted to see whatever Theo was seeing then; it must have been horrible, simply because Theo never yearned for anything good, anything present. But whatever horrors he was imagining etched out on that ceiling, Boris wanted to see them, too.

Finally, Theo sat up and reached sloppily for the bedside table, knocking over an empty glass. He leaned back onto the bed with his iPod clutched in his fist. Wordlessly he unwound the earbuds and held one out to Boris, not glancing up as he chose a song.

They sat cross-legged, facing each other, like when Boris had shown him how to inhale smoke on the playground. He thought quickly of that afternoon, when he’d allowed himself to be bolder with Theo than he’d ever been while sober, and banished the thought just as fast. That afternoon had been too close for comfort. Boris knew that because of exactly how dizzyingly comfortable it had felt, to hold Theo’s face so close to his own, to watch his lips form that surprised little “o”, to-

The first chords of _Karma Police_ blared into Boris' left ear, just as it did a few dozen times a week. He focused on the music for a minute, until suddenly, the volume decreased all at once- the song a mere echo in his head. 

He heard his name spoken just as quietly.

Boris looked up to see Theo sitting abnormally close to him, studying him with a frustrated expression- like Boris was a passage in _ Walden _ that he just couldn’t crack. 

“What…?” Boris breathed.

_Is this what Theo had felt that day in the playground_, he wondered to himself. _Too comfortable for comfort._

In response, Theo lifted his right hand until his fingertips hovered just over Boris’ jaw. They both froze. Like maybe they were approaching something they wouldn't be able to come back from.

With a furrowed brow, Theo touched his fingertips down. His nails, black underneath and much too long, left a soft tingle in the wake of his skin as he began, in slow motion, to ghost his fingers along the length of Boris’ chin, his jaw, the lowest part of his bottom lip, barely touching him. Just enough that Boris could tell he was there.

He said nothing as Theo’s hand moved up to his cheek, the ridge of his nose, across to his temple. Inch by inch.

It should’ve been weird, or awkward; Boris should have been laughing in embarrassment. But instead, he was stuck, suspended in amber, at Theo’s mercy. Intoxicated, maybe.

He was exploring- logging every detail of Boris into his brain for later.

_(He doesn't know that_ _he’ll forget it all tomorrow.)_

Theo's fingers had migrated to Boris’ neck, his Adam’s apple, down to his collarbone and along his shoulder.

He never sped up, or took his eyes off what he was doing, never dropped that concentrated look in his eye. Concentrated, and slightly... surprised? Like he couldn't believe what he was feeling on the surface of Boris' skin. Or he couldn't believe he was doing it at all.

Finally, he pulled Boris’ forearm gently into his hands, so he could graze along the inside of his arm.

Horrible, spiky chills rattled up his neck at each whisper of Theo’s fingertips across his upturned palm, each of his own spindly fingers. 

It had felt for months as if they were two halves of the same person, ripped jaggedly apart long ago by something cosmic with a grudge against them. (Boris, at least, had thought it many times, aware of its lapses into cliché.) And this felt to him, somehow, like an attempt to mend the wounds where they'd been separated. Or it felt like a start.

Theo froze, holding Boris’ hand still in both of his own. 

He could do it now. If he wanted to- which he did- Boris could close the ever-shrinking distance between them. He would be breaking their final rule; but if he can’t kiss Theo, then why should Theo get to do whatever it was he was doing right now?

His ginger exploration of Boris’ torso was far more intimate than any of the things they’d done before, sweaty and fast under the covers. It put them all to shame.

So why shouldn’t he? Boris sat stock-still, trying to muster up the courage, staring intently at Theo’s lips. He could do it. He knew, every piece of him knew he would kiss him back. He’s going to do it.

Quickly and without warning, Theo dropped Boris’ palm and stood up, treading back to the bathroom with Popchyk in tow. Boris felt himself deflate, all the tension in his shoulders giving way at once. The end of a different song droned in the back of his brain.

As he stared at the bathroom door, the light spilling out from underneath it seemed to taunt him. 

The only thing separating him from that warm light was the door.

But the door was impenetrable. The door was suffocating grief and denial, the door was a genetic disposition to addiction and a redheaded girl off at school somewhere. Boris didn’t know how to open it.

He’d gone to sleep that night with Theo breathing heavily into his chest, making a home alongside the hopelessness that grew by the second.

Boris just held him tighter and hoped that maybe he’d forget about the whole thing the next morning, too.

Boris gets turned away from Theo’s shop. The man behind the desk won’t even say for sure if he works there, only that Boris should come back later. 

After checking around the sides of the storefront, he turns to go. Maybe Theo shouldn't know he’s here. Maybe it’s better for both of them if he deals with the Miami stuff himself, and sends _The Goldfinch_ back to Theo all wrapped in nice paper once he gets it back. 

He sits in a bar a few days later and stares at the photo of the painting's verso on his phone. The ugliness, the coarseness of it. It’s the most beautiful part of the thing, he thinks. It’s the only part that no one can recreate, no matter how hard they try.

Boris locks his phone and shoves it in his pocket, determined not to look at it any more. He takes another shot and stares at the dirty wooden bar in front of him.

He glances at his own hands, uncalloused and well-taken care of, a far cry from the blackened, bitten mess they were in his youth. 

Without thinking, he turns over his left palm.

His right index finger moves to slowly trace a soft line, from his wrist up to the top of his middle finger. As it hovers along, Boris’s mind flickers back to the verso, the little bird that sits on the other side of it. 

_You haven’t been hiding from Theo out of greed_, a voice that sounds almost like his mother’s scolds him. 

He’s been hiding, Boris realizes as he looks for whatever Theo saw in his hand, because if life with his father taught him anything, if Katya and his mother and Theo, Theo, Theo had taught him anything, it’s to stay away from the ones you love too much. Those are the ones who will kill you.

He snaps out of it when his phone rings. Cursing, he pulls it back out of his pocket and hears Myriam on the other end. He has to meet one of Horst’s people in Queens in an hour, she’s on her way to collect him. He quickly agrees and takes another shot before ambling onto the street.

A figure in a fancy coat speeds past Boris when he reaches the sidewalk, so fast he might have been knocked over if he hadn’t backed away at the last moment. Boris does a double take. The man, tall, sandy haired, well-dressed, had been wearing glasses. Big, round, ridiculous glasses. He knows them- like the lines on his own hand.

Boris steps into the middle of the sidewalk and forces himself to grin. 

“_Potter!_”

Theo turns.

**Author's Note:**

> leave a comment or come chat to me on tumblr @ shameful-shameless.tumblr.com
> 
> \- i cant get over the imagery of vegas, the possibilities of what they got up to; but neither can any of you  
\- i wanted the POVs to be even but hey we already got 800 pages of theo lets spread the love  
\- the title is from 'pale blue eyes' by the velvet underground


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